


fresh bro-ed coffee

by epiproctan



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, Christmas, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, Inspired by Folgers "Home for the Holidays" Commercial, M/M, Pining, i can't believe that's a tag, no actual incest i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 16:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiproctan/pseuds/epiproctan
Summary: Commercial actor Takashi Shirogane thought he’d have no problem playing the role of a totally normal, completely familial older brother.Alongside co-actor Keith, he quickly learns that he thought wrong.





	fresh bro-ed coffee

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this before s8 but i’m glad i saved it for afterwards bc i think we could all use something a little lighthearted rn
> 
> having seen the infamous [folgers commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Ir6CzxKl4) is a prerequisite for reading this fic, btw
> 
> thanks so much for betaing, [moth](https://curionabang.tumblr.com/)!! also thank you [kris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakauuas/pseuds/kalakauuas) for the title! love you guys <3 <3

The audition had been easy.

Too easy.

Shiro still can barely believe it wasn’t some sort of desperate dream, fueled by the ravenous want of a part and a paycheck. _“You’re the perfect big brother type we’ve been looking for,_ ” the director had cheerfully bantered with him on the way out, and it had only encouraged a feeling of security in his gut. It’s not the first time Shiro’s ever been told something like that. He knows he’s got that aura: baseball captain, Eagle Scout, already helping your grandma across the street before you can even offer your arm. But it is the first time it’s landed him a role in an ad like this, for a household name company with thirty seconds an hour on every major network.

He knows his lines inside out and backwards. He’s got his character’s persona nailed down. The girls in wardrobe had giggled as they sang praises about how his shoulders filled out his sweater, how perfect the fit was over his chest, without even glancing at his prosthetic. It’s a good day, all smooth sailing so far. This whole thing has been simple in the best kind of way. And, smiling to himself, Shiro steps onto the set and promises himself it’s going to keep being good. At this point, what could go wrong?

The sound of footsteps approach Shiro from behind, and he turns towards the noise. And lo and behold, what he comes face to face with is the answer to that very question.

Fresh from makeup, under the gleam of the set lights, he’s the culmination of all of Shiro’s wettest dreams on two long shapely legs. Big, dark eyes peering out from under feathered charcoal eyelashes, wild hair meticulously arranged to look like he’s just risen from a night of peaceful shuteye, lips curved up into a blade’s edge of a smile, this man looks every bit like he was born to grace television screens all over the nation.

“Hey Shiro,” he says, voice like the satisfying crunch of fresh snow.

“K-Keith!” Shiro replies with all the collectedness he can muster. Which is not a lot.

He takes a deep breath to steady himself, but a sweep of his eyes over Keith’s frame riles him again. There’s confident broadness in his shoulders where there used to just be the weight of an unfortunate childhood. An extra inch or two of height still only brings him to Shiro’s nose, but it’s enough to shout _I’ve grown_.

“You didn’t tell me you’d gotten this role!” Shiro says. He wants to say it comes out excited and happy, but more than that he thinks it probably just sounds shocked. He hadn’t even known that Keith was auditioning for commercials. He hadn’t even known that Keith was back in town.

Keith grins up at him in that way that’s got Shiro’s heart doing its best impression of a drum circle in his chest. Flannel pajama pants and a white cotton t-shirt are not inherently attractive, but somehow Keith wears them like lacy lingerie or a sleek leather jacket.

“I heard you were auditioning so I thought I’d give it a shot too,” he says, sounding pleased with himself. As he should be.

“Wow,” Shiro says, and he’s feeling a little breathless. He hasn’t seen it from behind yet but he just _knows_ those plaid bottoms definitely cling to Keith in all the right places. He feels it in his heart. “That’s—that’s great, Keith.”

It _is_ great. It really is. Because Shiro’s known Keith since he was a wild kid with his teeth always bared and walls a mile high. He’d ended up in the community acting classes that Shiro volunteered with purportedly as a way for him to work off some of his energy after school, but Shiro had always held the suspicion that his foster home was just looking for someone else to foist him off on for a few hours every day. Though he was a quiet, willful kid, Keith had surprised everyone with his knack for acting, especially after Shiro had seen some of his own lonely soul reflected in him and taken him under his wing.

They’ve been close—really close!—ever since, but Keith had skipped town two years ago to embark on an international journey to find his mom and learn about his heritage. He’d kept in touch through infrequent postcards and laggy Skype calls, but from what Shiro understands he’d been successful. And it definitely shows, even in this short interaction, in the way he carries himself, in his words and his tone. He’s never seen this self-possessed Keith before.

But Shiro hadn’t exactly anticipated him coming back like this. In a blaze of handsome ruggedness lit up by the lights in the rigging, catching fire to what Shiro had thought were the dying embers of some long-forgotten almost, passed over as a mutual unspoken mistake.

Shiro feels a little weak.

“Alright!” the director calls, her heels clacking as she comes onto the set, a cloud of silver hair floating behind her. “Let’s get to work.”

Her youth and friendliness seem to belie a no-nonsense attitude, and Shiro is reminded that this is his job, not a high school reunion. Sunnily, the director reintroduces herself to Shiro and Keith as Allura, and explains what she wants from them.

“I’ll presume you’ve read the script,” she says, with a copy of it in her own elegant hand. “Shiro, as you’re aware, you’re a beloved older brother returned home after a volunteer trip in Africa. Keith, you’re his younger brother and you’ve missed him a great deal.”

“Got it,” Keith replies with a nod, all confidence and eagerness.

Shiro is a little slower to respond. They’re brothers. Right, of course. Hadn’t Keith said something like that to him once? “You’re like a brother to me,” or something along those lines? Yeah. It’s barely even acting at this point. It’s just how things are between them. How things should be.

“Sounds great,” Shiro says.

The first scene goes off without a hitch. It’s simple and straightforward. Shiro gets out of the back of a taxi and steps onto a snow-laden lawn. Keith is grinning at him from the window of the house, as if he’s been watching, waiting for Shiro’s return. Shiro trudges through the fake snow up to the door and rings the doorbell. And that’s it. They do a few takes, Allura gives a few suggestions, and they get it done. Easy. No problem.

Beginning to feel more at ease after the surprise of seeing Keith and being able to catch up with him a bit between takes, Shiro wonders what had him so twisted up in the first place. So Keith has grown. It’s not like he’s changed that much. All the things Shiro has always found inspiring and valuable and admirable in him are the same. And of course, they work well together. They’ve known each for as long as they’ve been acting. It only makes sense that their chemistry is perfect. That they can fit any role given to them. They joke around with each other as they take a short water break, and the director seems pleased with their work so far. The rest of this is going to be a cakewalk.

Of course, Shiro forgot that nothing in his short, disastrous life is ever a cakewalk.

The hug, Shiro thinks as he opens his arms and goes in for it, is supposed to be familial. Shiro’s never had any siblings but he thinks about the way Matt hugs Pidge, or the time that he saw Lance hug Veronica hello at the airport when he went to pick her up. This should be that kind of hug. The script doesn’t say as much, but Shiro’s an actor. He can _act_ like Keith is his brother. That’s what he’s getting paid to do, so he’s going to do it.

Except the instant Keith is in his space, alarms blare in his head. _Something is wrong!_ shouts his internal monologue like an internet error. He doesn’t know what gives it away to him first. If it’s the angle of approach, where both Keith’s arms go over and Shiro’s arms go under and suddenly he’s looped around Keith’s waist and Keith has him by the neck. It could be the way they both step in, and it goes from contact at the arms and the chest to a full-body, hip to hip, thigh to thigh encounter. It could be how Keith is just tall enough to tuck his face into the junction of Shiro’s shoulder and neck, which is exactly what he does, pressing in above his scarf and inhaling with his nose against Shiro’s skin. Or it could be the way that they stand there and _hold_.

Shiro doesn’t know what this is, but it’s definitely not the hugs he’s seen Matt give Pidge. Hell, it’s not even the hug Shiro gives any of his _friends_ . The last time Shiro remembers being hugged like this is before he and Adam broke up. _Well_ before. Like, when they were still trading “I love you”s on a daily basis.

But it’s nice. Keith’s shirt is soft, his body is warm, and Shiro can hear the sound of his breathing against his neck. The expansion-contraction of his lungs presses directly against Shiro’s torso, and Shiro begins to focus on picking up the sound of his beating heart.

Someone in the background clears their throat, and both Shiro and Keith jerk backwards, eyes wide and locked on each other. The shot’s ruined anyway, and Shiro knows it, so it’s not like the way he slowly draws his arms back into his own personal space is going to be a problem. Keith is still so much in his space he can feel the warmth of him, those big dark doe eyes blinking up at Shiro from so close that Shiro could just crane his head a bit to brush a kiss across his forehead.  

“Well,” Allura calls brightly over their preoccupation with each other. “That certainly was...interesting! Let’s do that one again, shall we?”

“Yeah,” says Keith, and he finally takes a step away. Shakes his arms out. Bounces on the balls of his feet. Looks around him, like he’s just noticing that the room is full of people who have cameras pointed at him. “Yeah.”

It is possible that he didn’t think about it, Shiro allows. Maybe that’s why the hug was so...like that. Maybe Keith’s mind just slipped for a minute. Sometimes it happens. You just get so caught up in what you’re doing that you forget that you’re acting. Shiro and Keith used to hug all the time, so that right there was two years of hug backlogs that needed to be dealt with. Now they can tone it down, and act like the brothers that they definitely are.

They get the cameras rolling again. They go through their motions, trade their lines. Shiro opens his arms up. Keith comes in. From the start, they manage to do better this time, with alternating arms over and under. Very familial. Very brotherly.

But then someone, something, has to ruin it. Shiro isn’t sure if it’s him or Keith, but suddenly Shiro’s having the extraordinarily intrusive thought that the jut of Keith’s hip is locked against his own, that Keith gives off heat like a radiator, that Keith is equal parts soft skin and hard muscle under his hold. Then Keith’s hair brushes against Shiro’s jawline, and it’s all over.

Shiro yanks himself away, and Keith is left standing there with his arms hanging, looking bewildered.

“Cut!” calls Allura. She’s leaning forward in her chair, lips frowning. “Something the matter?”

“No,” Shiro replies, very quickly. There’s a scoff from the back of the room that he thinks might be his agent, Lance. He tries his best to ignore it, because he’s got a job to do. “Can we do that take one more time?”

Allura nods. “It might be good if you two keep some space between you,” she points out, as if it needed to be said.

Right. Space. They can do that. Because family members give each other space when they hug. They don’t snuggle into each other’s necks. Or stand with their crotches pressed against each other.

This would be a lot easier, Shiro thinks, if this had been anyone at all but Keith.

He’d be an idiot if he didn’t pick up on the undertones of Keith’s unconditional, unwavering devotion and loyalty to him over the course of their friendship. He’d be a liar if he said he didn’t occasionally give thought his own reciprocity of it. And there had been a time in Shiro’s life, just before Keith left, that he’d believed that the lingering eye contact, the physicality between them, the soft midnight conversations that served to stabilize Shiro’s mental state and open Keith up to the world, had been well on its way to meaning something more for them. It’s a little dizzying to be confronted by all that again, and he tries to neatly box it up and set it aside. But part of him wonders if this is merely God’s way of testing his commitment to his trade.

For example:

“You’re my present this year,” Keith says in a low, silken voice, looking up at Shiro through his dark, dark eyelashes. The way his hair falls into his eyes makes Shiro want to nose through it, inhale deep at his hairline. He’s wearing the smallest hint of a playful smile, and Shiro subconsciously leans closer to get a better look at the pattern of purple and blue in his irises, reflecting the careful lighting of the set.

Even before Allura shouts, “Cut!” there are exasperated sighs from the crew all around them.

“ _Really_?” someone mutters from behind the camera.

Beyond the glare of the lights, Shiro watches as the representative from the company scurries over to Allura. They talk to each other with their heads bowed together for a long moment. Shiro can hear the vague murmuring from all corners of the room.

It’s not their fault, okay? It’s not their fault that they can’t even _pretend_ to be brothers. There’s just something so unmistakably _not brotherly_ about their relationship. Keith is determinedly not looking at Shiro, reciting lines under his breath, like that’s going to save him from sounding like he’s proposing a romp in front of the fireplace instead of offering to make coffee.

Suddenly his eyes snap up to Shiro’s face. He looks determined, his eyebrows lowered and his gaze intense.

“You’re my brother,” he says with conviction. “I love you.”

Shiro’s heart stops in his chest.

“Alright everyone,” Allura calls out to them, and Keith turns to look, completely unbothered. But Shiro can’t restart his mental faculties or his motor functions.

“We’re going to try that again. Keith, I think it would help if you could raise the pitch of your voice. Sound a little more casual.”

“Sounds good,” Keith says, and rubbing his hands together he gets back into place for the scene.

“Action!”

Smiling, Keith leans close to Shiro and plants the adhesive ribbon on the center of his chest. His fingers linger over the muscle under Shiro’s gray sweater before he drags his gaze from his chest, up the line of his throat, across his chin, to his lips, to his nose, to finally, his eyes.

“You’re my present this year,” and to his credit, it _is_ lighter this time, more casual, unburdened by the implications of whatever highly questionable meaning he was giving those words before. But his hand is still somewhere around Shiro’s midsection, resting over the fabric above his abs, and Shiro can feel its warmth and its weight there. There’s a burn in his cheeks like they just did a hundred pull-ups.

When Shiro turns and walks completely off the set, nothing follows him but a long, uncomfortable silence.

The rep from the company finds him about twenty minutes later in wardrobe. He’s been guzzling down water bottles under the guise that he’s overwarm from the strong set lights, but no amount of water can truly quench his thirst right now.

“Are you feeling better, Mr. Shirogane?” she asks. “We were wondering if we could get started again.”

“Yeah!” Shiro replies, far too enthusiastically. “Yeah,” he tries again, even though he isn’t. He isn’t feeling better.

Especially not when he’s face-to-face with Keith in this cozy kitchen set again, with fake snow falling beyond its fake window, the overhead lights dimmed down to give it a predawn atmosphere. Keith seems to have somehow become even more beautiful in the twenty minutes that Shiro was away. It’s possible that they touched up his makeup, but Shiro is certain that the glow he exudes from within can’t be replicated by any kind of primer-concealer-foundation-powder routine.

He’s doing this on purpose. He has to be doing this on purpose. Is he trying to ruin their careers? Does he think this is funny?

No, Shiro realizes. This is just Keith. This is just him and Keith. This is how they interact. This is them. Their relationship.

“Alright,” Allura says. “Let’s take it from, ‘Brought you something.’”

Shiro takes a deep breath and puts his game face on—a warm, completely brotherly smile.

* * *

“So,” Keith says. “Have you seen it?”

It’s two days until Christmas and they’re side-by-side on Shiro’s couch, a beer sitting on the floor at each of their feet. At some point since they’ve sat down here the sun has dipped away, and now the room is only by the blue glow of the television before them and the twinkle of Shiro’s Christmas tree over their shoulders. Keith’s knee knocks against Shiro’s every time one of them moves, but neither of them has made the effort to slide farther away from each other, even though there’s more than a solid foot of space on either side of them.

“Not yet,” Shiro hedges, knowing exactly what Keith is talking about. He feels weirdly anxious about it. He knows his performance wasn’t great. Or at least, wasn’t what the ad agency was looking for. They told him as much afterward, but from what he understands they used the footage anyway.

“It might come on,” Keith says, nodding towards the TV. “They’ve been running it.”

He shifts his weight, his knee knocking against Shiro’s again.

“I haven’t seen it either,” he admits.

Truth be told, Shiro had wanted to watch it on his own first. But it’s his own fault that he hasn’t yet, because every single time he’s sat down to, his stomach twists painfully. It’s not that he’s embarrassed of a subpar performance. He just was never sure if he could handle seeing the emotion he’ll never be talented enough to hide clearly engraved in every line of his face.

So now he’s stranded here in his living room, trapped between Keith and the television. He holds his breath every time the overdramatized Animal Planet vet show they’re semi-watching as they talk cuts to commercial, hoping it doesn’t show up.

Of course, it does show up. Of course, it’s bad.

It’s so bad he can’t really imagine how this got past the censors. Surely there’s some law about implied incest on national television in coffee commercials. Because there’s absolutely no way to not read into this. Into the way Shiro’s hands linger on Keith’s hips when they gently pull out of their hug. Into the way Keith’s eyes flicker down to Shiro’s lips not once but _four_ times throughout the “you’re my present” scene. Into the way Shiro slings his arm around Keith’s waist and pulls him in _tight_ , the way Keith looks up at Shiro as though _he’s_ the Christmas tree, as the scene blurs to bokeh and the company logo appears on the screen.

It’s just...bad.

There’s silence between them for the rest of the commercial break. It isn’t until the show comes back on, introducing a cat that needs a c-section, that Shiro dares to open his mouth.

“So,” he says, not looking away from the television screen. “What did you think?”

“Shiro.”

It takes a minute of Shiro staring at the cat being anesthetized to realize that that was Keith’s full and complete statement.

“Yeah?” he asks weakly, still staring at the screen. He finds himself scared. Vulnerable. Like the commercial has rubbed all his skin away and Keith is staring straight through to his heart.

“Shiro,” Keith says again, now with the slightest hint of irritation, and Shiro knows there’s no backing away from this.

He turns towards Keith to see that Keith’s eyes are already trained on him, dark and intense in the way that only Keith’s can be. He stares Shiro down like Shiro is a train speeding down the tracks that he’s for some reason decided to face head-on, even though in the next moment he’s the one who’s moving.

Keith slips into Shiro’s space. Shiro remains stock-still, not because he wants to but because suddenly his muscles have decided to shut down in the proximity of such a beautiful, dangerous creature. He stays that way even when Keith glances down, as if to reassure himself that Shiro’s lips have not departed his face, because that’s certainly where he’s headed as he closes his eyes and tilts his head to the side.

Shiro watches him coming in like a homing missile, heart beating so loud and so fast that it reverberates through all of his bones and in his skull. This is happening and this is happening right _now_ after all these months and these years, right here on his couch. Shiro closes his eyes and steadies his breathing.

Keith’s lips are a little bit rough, chapped. But they’re warm. And they’re attached to Keith. There isn’t really anyone else Shiro could imagine wanting to feel his own mouth on.

He kisses back, because of course he does. Because how could he not? He slides a hand up Keith’s neck to cup his face and holds him against his lips, because now that he has this he’s not going to let it get away. He leans in and feels Keith’s mouth open under his. He uses that moment to savor the sensation, the taste, the sound, the feel of Keith kissing him and kissing him. Shiro’s chest aches with a relief that feels like it’s been waiting to manifest for a thousand years.

“Keith,” Shiro says with a gasp when he finally manages to pull himself away. His heart is still going a gazillion beats per minute, but it feels good. He feels good. “I really like you.”

Keith grins.

“I had a feeling,” he says, wiping his spit-shiny mouth with the back of his hand. “But watching that made me certain.”

Shiro laughs, and unable to help himself, leans forward again until he’s in Keith’s space. Keith doesn’t back away.

“What does that say about our acting?” Shiro asks, meeting Keith’s eyes, just inches from his own.

“Nothing that our agents didn’t already tell us, I’m sure,” replies Keith, his voice low and husky.

Shiro hums an amused agreement against Keith’s mouth, and they don’t stop kissing until they hear their own voices on the screen again. Laughing, they throw popcorn at the television and parrot their lines back and forth to each other.

Halfway through, Keith pauses and blinks up at Shiro through the thick fan of his eyelashes. With his arms wrapped around Shiro’s neck he draws up close enough to brush the tip of his nose against Shiro’s.

And without a hint of a joke, without a smidge of brotherliness, without the slightest bit of acting, he says, “You’re my present this year.”

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/epiproctan) [tumblr](https://epiproctan.tumblr.com) [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/keithshirogane)
> 
> got some more sheith coming at you soon. hang in there pals. we'll fix this together <3


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